Fic, 26 Birthday Kisses, Still Waiting For You

Title: Kiss Eighteen: Still Waiting For You (To Be The One I'm Waiting For) [Kame/Jin]Rating/Warnings: PG for how hot Someday for Somebody is.Summary: Kame's been using his time to think, leading up to the KAT-TUN Cartoon II tour. AN: For 26 Birthday Kisses, Kiss Eighteen: I Forgive You Kiss. Also, aside from being my birthday tomorrow (19th), it's the one-year anniversary of Jin's return to KAT-TUN. Japan gives me the best presents~

It's two days until the Sendai stop of KAT-TUN's spring tour and things have been remarkably civil. Jin's return wasn't a surprise exactly, but it was unannounced at any rate. A sense of relief permeates all six of them, smoothing any minor altercations between them out even with the exhaustive practices and meetings.

Mostly.

"Boy," Jin says loudly from the second row of the venue, feet up on the backs of the front row of seats. "That's some fancy solo you have there, Kame-chan!"

Kame grits his teeth and says nothing as he resets to his start position, stripping off the green shirt and scooping up the white one on the way by. Honestly, he's surprised it's taken this long for Jin to start up about it.

"I wish I had a cool solo like that!" Jin continues, kicking his boot against the back of the seat for emphasis. "Or, you know any solo."

In the wings, Kame sees Nakamaru exchange a glance with Koki and open his mouth, but Kame jerks his head, telling him not to bother. Let Jin blow off the steam, if it helps. He can't say he wouldn't feel the same if he came back from six months of exile to be given some thin platitude about how it's too late to change all the lighting and don't they want to prove that KAT-TUN is more than just two lead singers?

Kame's patience begins to unravel as he can't quite get the timing of the costume changes right, forcing him to rerun the sequence over and over. It's all a matter of practice, he keeps trying to tell himself, of getting the right motions in the right order. But even if the perfectionist in him didn't insist on having the whole thing perfect, in this particular sequence there's no room for error: if Kame flubs a grab or a button, he'll be doing the rest of his solo half-naked, which wouldn't be shocking exactly, but he sure won't match his juniors then.

"Really, Kame-chan?" Jin drawls lazily when Kame muffs the fastest of the changes, pink to green, for the third time in a row. "I seem to remember you being a lot better than that at getting your clothes off."

"I'm sorry if I don't end up naked quite as fast as you," Kame snarls, patience finally snapping, "but then again I haven't had as much practice, haven't I? I've been too busy working!"

He regrets the words as soon as they hit the air, even before he hears the slap of Nakamaru's hand meeting his forehead behind him.

"That's right," Jin says icily, standing up and glaring at Kame with hard eyes. "I just spend all my time on my back, because I'm nothing but the pretty one, you know. Good thing I don't have as much to practice then, isn't it?"

Jin stomps off before Kame can reply, and Kame takes a long, shaky breath and holds it until he can let it out smoothly.

"I'll go after him," he says, holding up a hand as Koki and Ueda both step forward.

"But…" Junno starts, voice worried, but Kame ignores all of them and hops off the stage to following Jin out through the side door. He needs a break anyway. As the door shuts behind him, he hears Nakamaru saying that he's ready to practice so they don't waste any time, and Kame makes a mental note to thank him later for being the normal one.

Jin isn't hurrying, he's just sulking, so it isn't hard to catch him. Kame reaches for Jin's elbow to get him to stop, but Jin jerks his arm away from Kame's touch.

Part of Kame wants to rise to Jin's bait, to snap back and demand to know when Jin is going to grow up or if he ever plans to, but in the last six months it's Kame who's grown up some, and he knows there's no point in asking Jin questions that he can't answer.

Instead his voice is calm when he says, "No one ever said you were just the pretty one."

"No one?" Jin raises an eyebrow. "No one ever?"

"No one who matters." Kame shrugs.

"Oh, what do you know about what matters?" Jin snarls, and he gives the wall a kick. "Stop acting like you think for yourself, when all you ever do is just what you're told to!"

Kame's eyes narrow. "That's big talk from the sort of person who won't even tell his band what he got sent away for."

"Jin, please." Kame cuts through Jin's bluster before he can really get going. "We're debuted for less then a year when you leave with hardly any warning and no set time-frame, return out of the blue, and you don't even have a solo on the tour? You don't want to be friends anymore, fine, you don't have to tell me anything, but don't treat me like I'm the one who left my brain on the west coast."

Jin doesn't say anything to that. He does kick the wall again, but it seems like his heart isn't really in it this time. Six months ago, Kame would have tried to fill in all the spaces between them with words, driving both of them crazy. Now he realizes that the silence will drive Jin crazy long before him.

"I like your solo," Jin finally admits, staring at the floor. Kame feels the rub of irritation at the fact that Jin really isn't going to tell him, but he pushes it aside.

"I know," he says instead.

"But I think your shirts are gay," Jin continues, petulant. "And you look like a pervert with all those juniors in cages."

"I know," Kame says again, smiling a little.

Jin pauses, but Kame waits for it, and sure enough, eventually Jin pulls his eyes up to Kame's face to ask, "Do you want to be friends again?"

It's not what Kame is expecting, and he thinks for a moment. "No," he says after a few beats, and when Jin scowls and opens his mouth, adds, "not like we were."

Jin shuts his mouth and seems to think about that; it's a strange look on him.

"I'd rather be the real kind," Kame says simply, and he leans forward to kiss Jin. It's on the mouth, but it's chaste and gentle, which is probably about the only kind of kiss that they haven't exchanged before. Between them, it's been rough or fumbling or competitive or sad, but it's never been gentle.

Kame's been using his time to think things through, and he thinks maybe he could be talked into giving their friendship one more try if it were the kind where they weren't trying to hurt each other.

He turns to go, leaving Jin struck silent and thoughtful like that in the hallway, to go back to practice. They've got a spring tour to get on with, after all, and Kame's not the one who's left his head on the west coast.